A study of strategies for developing online laboratories

Abstract

Researchers and teachers around the world have created newsoftware and hardware to develop, reuse, and deploy online laboratories (labs). However, due to the nature of labs, most of the available solutions depend greatly on where and how online labs can be used in the first place. Thus, there have been multiple design solutions and great technology combinations. In this study, we analyzed and studied the main obstacles in the online lab development and the alternatives of the technologies, means, methodologies, and approaches on creating online labs. The resulting analysis showed the advantages, disadvantages, and problems of each key component and attempted to explore the working combinations that ensure the usability, modularity, universality, accessibility, and reliability of online labs. In addition, we explored a general solution to take advantage of the benefits of the technologies involved in online labs and to fix or reduce the impacts of the arising problems when developing and deploying online labs.